Flashback Weekend Chicago Horror Con 2025
Joe Dante is the director behind Gremlins and Gremlins 2: The New Batch, as well as Looney Tunes: Back in Action, Small Soldiers, and a segment of Twilight Zone: The Movie.
He joined me via Zoom before his appearance at the 2025 Flashback Weekend Horror Convention in Rosemont, Ill.
To listen to the interview with Joe Dante, click the play button below (or click here to open the audio player in a new tab/window).
Joe Dante will be one of many guests from different popular movie franchises at Flashback Weekend Chicago Horror Con 2025.
Flashback Weekend will be held at the Hyatt Regency O'Hare Chicago in Rosemont, Ill. from August 1 through August 3, 2025.
Tickets and more information can be found on their website.
Mike Reflects
If you can’t tell, I was more excited to talk to Joe about his work on Looney Tunes: Back in Action than any of his other movies.
While Gremlins is probably—certainly—his most iconic project, Looney Tunes is probably my personal favorite.
I’m especially fascinated by the nature of making mixed animation/live action movies.
After my interview with Caroline Fourmy, I talked about my interest in working in my movies and a few examples of "movie magic" that I witnessed and was fascinated by. The ability to mix live action with animation has always been a big "How’d they do that?" for me.
Getting to explore that a little bit, through the lens of Looney Tunes: Back in Action, especially with how it contrasted with the puppets of Gremlins was a highlight in the interview for me.
And I think that contrast is, itself, an interesting point.
The Looney Tunes are always going to be cartoons. Whether they’re CGI or hand-drawn, their final form as they appear in the movie will never anything a live actor can react to in the moment.
In my opinion, a big part of the charm of Gremlins (and this also goes for movies like Jurassic Park and E.T., as well) is that it didn’t have those same constraints.
Puppetry is an art. When done as well it was done in Gremlins, it seems like even the most advanced post production team could do would be to achieve the same results, but with less for the live actors to react to.
Joe essentially made that same point during the interview.
It was fascinating to be able look at these two movies from a technical standpoint, with the same director at the helm.